ROW80 Goals - Round 1

With the beginning of A Round of Words in 80 Days looming, I figured I should probably pull my thumb out and set myself some goals for the first round.

As I mentioned in my previous post, me setting goals often tends to be a fruitless exercise. Mainly because (I think), I get a bit optimistic about my capabilities, so I set goals that aren't really achievable (this happens not just in writing but in life in general). As soon as I become aware that I'm not going to make it, I start procrastinating for all I'm worth (and you know what they say about procrastination...).

So, for ROW80, I have thought more carefully about my goal-setting than I usually do, because I want it to be something I can actually accomplish. Not only so I will actually have something to show for it, but so I don't end up with that all-too-familiar feeling of failure and worthlessness. Therefore, my goals for ROW80 Round 1 are as follows:

Major Goal
*To complete Part 1 of Dark and Silent Waters, my novella, ie. The first four chapters (not including the prologue, which is already complete).

Minor Goals
*To complete one chapter every fortnight.
*To workshop at least one, hopefully two of these chapters among my writing group.
*To edit/polish Part 1.

To see what goals other ROW80 participants have posted, click here.

Of Writing and Workshopping

Last Saturday we had the first meeting of my new writing workshop group.

The proposal for the group came from one of my fellow writers from TAFE, who said she had been feeling disconnected from the writing community since leaving the course. During the meeting, it became obvious that this was a sentiment shared by all of us; we missed the face-to-face feedback and critiquing, the immediacy of sharing our writing with other people in the same room.

At TAFE, having daily classes meant that we had constant deadlines imposed on us. As much as we complained about being forced to submit poems and short stories, novels and screenplays, the fact that we had to have something to workshop most weeks meant that we were always writing. In the three years since the writing course ended, however, many of us have become a bit slack as far as writing goes - at least, I know I have. I'd set goals for myself and then uni or work or life would get in the way, and I'd just sort of shrug and say "I'll do it next month". Though I did get a bit of my novella done during NaNoWriMo this year, I haven't written nearly as much as I should have. And I pretty much haven't touched my fantasy trilogy since TAFE.

It felt good to be in a room full of writers again. Even though we weren't actually workshopping, it felt as though just talking about the writing and critiquing process was enough to stir my need to create. We now have others to hold us accountable; if we say we want to have a piece done by a given time, the other group members can give us the proverbial kick in the pants we need to reach that goal. The group we've thrown together is full of good writers and workshoppers, so I'm looking forward to seeing what influence it has on my own writing. I'm hoping that with other writers constantly reading and critiquing my work and giving me feedback, it will improve not only the quantity but also the quality of what I write. Maybe, just maybe, it will make the difference between having a few random chapters of a manuscript and having a completed novella ready to publish.

Between writing and doing Honours for IT/Multimedia, it looks like I have an interesting (if hectic) year ahead.

And because it's Christmas, here's a picture of my dog asleep under the Christmas tree:

A Round of Words in 80 Days

With the hectic rush of NaNoWriMo over, I was putting off writing by trawling the writing forums, when I stumbled across a link to this site:

A Round of Words in 80 Days

The site was started by a NaNoWriMo participant who, like many others, found it impossible to disconnect completely from their real life in order to meet the requirements of NaNoWriMo. It is another writing challenge, similar to NaNoWriMo, but instead of having only 30 days to complete the challenge, you have 80. Also, instead of having to churn out 50,000 words, writers can set their own goals they wish to achieve. Writers sign in using their blogs, and throughout the challenges keep participants updated on their progress, as well as encouraging others to reach their goals.
Many people feel that writing 50,000 words in a month is just too big a task (in a way, I empathise - I reached 50,000 but only by madly bashing out senseless drivel to fill that Word document). However, sometimes writers need something to push us to keep writing, a deadline, a reward, a supportive community; anything. We need something to get us into our chair in front of our keyboard, without being intimidated by it. A Round of Words in 80 Days should get us there (kind of like bribing a kid with chocolate to clean their room... hmm... now I want chocolate...). It's a challenge that WE choose, so we know we can win :)
I've joined; hope to see some of you there!

NaNoWriMo - The Aftermath

So, it's now December. Not only does that mean we are now officially in the Christmas month (do I hear a collective cry of dismay from my fellow retail workers? Oh yes), it also means that NaNoWriMo has come to an end.
I remember saying at the start of November that I doubted I would get to 50,000 words but that I was sure I'd end up with at least a completed draft of my novella. As it turns out, I did get 50,000 words... but no finished draft. While some scenes seemed to flow through my mind like movies (to the point where I rambled on excessively for the sake of word count), there were other parts of my story that just did not want to be written yet.
Unlike some other writers I know who finished days early, I was a leave-it-til-the-last-minute type. I hit 50,000 words with only 20 minutes before the midnight deadline. And 25,000 or so of those words were written in the last three days of NaNoWriMo.
Because of academic commitments, I didn't really get to start working on NaNoWriMo until the middle of the month, which put me at an immediate disadvantage. And when I finally did get to start working on it, my inner editor just would not leave me alone.
Those of you who know me are aware that I'm a bit of a grammar Nazi, so you can imagine how I felt about allowing myself to write absolute rubbish. Every unedited word I left behind, every incoherent sentence I typed made me die a little inside. Through the early and middle parts of the month, I was still writing as I normally do; write a paragraph, check it, write a few more, check those, finish the chapter, check it, check it again, make people read it and provide feedback, rewrite. As a result, my progress was quite slow. On November 28, I realised that I wouldn't get anywhere near 50,000 if I kept going that way, so I shoved my inner editor into a cage and threw away the key (I threw it somewhere I could easily find it in December though hehe).
Most of what I wrote for NaNoWriMo was absolute garbage. Of my 50,000 words, only about 15,000 or so are worth keeping. But that is more than double what I had when I started, so it's still quite an achievement. I have about four chapters more or less complete now, plus fragments of most of the other thirteen chapters, so I have a more solid foundation to keep building on throughout December; since I didn't make it for November, I'm aiming to have a draft completed by New Year.
In closing, I'd like to congratulate all those NaNoWriMos who reached their 50,000 words. And to those who didn't, well done for trying; it was a huge challenge :)

Why Writers Should Not Be Allowed Out In Public

I started out tonight by trying to work on my novella, but a combination of too much sugar and too little sleep have resulted in nothing but pages of incoherent rambling. So I thought I'd share a little anecdote instead.

Most people who know me know that I work in the clothing section of a large retail store. Tonight I was running around the footwear department, madly trying to tidy it up, and while I was working, my brain was thinking about my novella, and about where a major confrontation between the protagonist and the antagonist should take place. Half way through this train of thought, a customer ran up and hurriedly asked me a question before I had properly registered her presence. As a result, the conversation turned out as follows:

Customer: 'Scuse me, can you tell me where I can find the shoe polish?
Me: The Underworld?
Customer: ... What?
Me: *awkward, vacant pause* What? Oh. Um... Yeah, sorry, two aisles that way.

Luckily the customer had a sense of humour (after she got what she wanted, she came past again and said "Got my shoe polish, had to fight Hades for it though."), but it made me wonder if perhaps my preoccupation with Dark and Silent Waters had become a little unhealthy. Oh well... I'm sure it won't be the last time I make a fool of myself for the sake of my craft :D

Has anyone else out there had an experience where they had difficulty separating fiction from reality?

Hey, Doc, I Got A Bad Case Of Adjectivitis...

Just a quick post to share a blog post by Michael Pryor, author of (among other things) young adult fantasy series The Laws of Magic.

Writing Disease by Michael Pryor

To this list I would like to add Expositionitis: The tendency to dump dull/irrelevant information on the poor unsuspecting reader, resulting in hideous slabs of exposition lurking between otherwise reasonable paragraphs of prose.

I know that I have suffered from most of these on more than one occasion, and I'm sure most of my other fellow writers will empathise :) I think we need to get these recognised as official medical conditions. That way us writers can use them to take time off work/uni etc to work on our novels :D

Staring into Dark and Silent Waters...

I'm taking a short break from writing my novella (I just hit 6,000 words for NaNoWriMo :D), and I thought I'd post a link to the song that basically inspired the whole story:

Shallow Waters - Amberian Dawn

As I've mentioned (I think) in an earlier post, I was muddling away with my fantasy trilogy at the start of the year when I chanced upon this song on YouTube. In creative terms, listening to it was like being hit with a bomb. With the lyrics telling an engaging story and the music setting a dark and depressing mood, my brain filled with images and ideas the same way the Titanic filled with water after it crashed into that iceberg (although luckily my brain didn't sink into the Atlantic ocean, killing around 1,500 people). The world and characters came to life in my mind, growing and changing until it was like a movie playing in my head.

The song may not be to everyone's tastes, but I'm sure that those who have read bits of my novella so far will see how I made the connections (and yes, my novella's title was pilfered from the lyrics).

Out of curiosity, has anyone else ever had a moment where a song/TV show/whatever inspires them to write to the point where they can't step away from the keyboard?

Anyhoo, back to writing I go :)

NaNoWriMo 2010

Well, November is almost upon us, and as most of my fellow writerly folk out there will know, that means it's... NaNoWriMo! (or National Novel Writing Month for those who aren't familiar with it). Basically, writers spend all of November writing a novel, with their ultimate goal being to hit 50,000 words. To find out more about it, click here.

I remember a few months ago, I posted a schedule of completion for my novella, Dark and Silent Waters. It was meticulously planned out and I was determined to stick to it... And naturally, study and illness and a plethora (I know that word is cliched but I still like saying it) of other Crap Events got in my way, so I ended up failing miserably. In fact I don't think I've even touched my novella since I posted the outline.

This will be my first year doing NaNoWriMo. Last year I didn't do it because I was too busy/lazy, but this year I've decided that it might just be the push I need to make some real progress on my novella. Generally I tend to focus too much on 'making something perfect' before moving on to the next bit, and I know that this slows me down. NaNoWriMo will give me an excuse to write absolute rubbish and not feel bad about it, as long as I can bring my manuscript closer to completion (and I can always edit the crappy bits later). I'm also hoping that competing/talking with other writers will give me even more motivation and inspiration to write.

I don't think I'll actually get to 50,000 words - as Dark and Silent Waters is a novella, I can't see it being much more than 40,000 words unless I pad it out with meaningless junk, which I don't want to do - but if I do get a completed draft of my manuscript, I will still consider myself a winner of NaNoWriMo (and I shall brag about it accordingly).

If anyone else is doing NaNoWriMo this year, feel free to add me as a buddy: RebeccaJFleming_DemonicDragon. We can nag/encourage each other on our respective paths to NaNoWriMo success :)

Illustration: Yarraine from Exile

Going through my illustrations for things to put into my IT folio, I came across this; one of the first illustrations I did of Yarraine, the Dragon General, protagonist of my fantasy trilogy, Exile.

This illustration wasn't drawn specifically for my novel; in first year graphics, we had to create a character for a computer game, so I took my novel character and modified it slightly to fit with the game story I'd created (basically, Yarraine became the Dragon Empress instead of the Dragon General). At the time I was prepared to run with it as a suitable illustration for Yarraine as the General, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised her Empress costume I'd given her wasn't appropriate. The long, flowing dress and the mystical sceptre are all very showy and mysterious looking - which Yarraine is, in a way - but no one in their right mind is going to go into battle wearing that little number. And the pose doesn't really suit a powerful warrior-mage (though it does perfectly suit another main character from the trilogy, so I may reuse it when I draw the other character).
In the near future, I'm hoping to draw another version of Yarraine, this time wearing more battle-appropriate armour, and with a more commanding posture. And I'm also going to try to fix her hair (not 100% happy with how it turned out). I've improved my drawing skills since I drew this one, so hopefully my next effort will be cover-worthy hehe

Narratives and Nocturnes

Earlier today, while working on my novella, I was flicking through my music collection, trying to decide what to listen to. I was getting more and more frustrated because I couldn't seem to find anything that would get the words flowing. And this made me wonder about some writerly advice I'd been given years ago. I can't remember who it was - I suspect it was one of my TAFE teachers from the Writing and Editing course, or perhaps another student - but whoever it was had said something along the lines of "Having any form of background noise while writing, whether it be television, music or life in general, distracts you from writing and has a negative impact on anything you do write."
To me, this is a bit like saying "Everyone must write with their left hand." or "Everyone should eat every meal with chopsticks." Something that helps one person might hinder another person. Likewise, if something is useful in one situation, that doesn't mean it will be suitable for other situations. I know some writers who able to write anywhere, whether they're in a busy cafe or on a crowded train. Others have to lock themselves in a cone of silence or they're unable to concentrate on anything.
And then there are some (like me) who need music to write.
Oddly enough, when I am writing non-fiction, such as articles or uni assignments, I prefer to work in silence. But when I'm writing fiction, I almost always have to have music. And the music has to create the same sort of atmosphere as the scene I'm trying to write.
When writing, I tend to listen to mostly gothic rock/symphonic metal bands, with a few exceptions. Mainly because I like the sound of it, but also because I feel that, in a way, it suits the genre I tend to write in (those of you who are familiar with my work will know that I write primarily dark fantasy). And quite often, when I'm stuck on a particular scene, listening to music can make the scene suddenly come to life in my mind, as if it's playing out before me as a movie. I actually have a set of songs for each 'type' of scene I write (anger/battle, sad/depressing or amusing etc).
I guess the notion of background music/noise as inpsiration or distraction can be applied to all creative endeavours, whether it be drawing, painting, sculpting and so on. Anyway, I thought I'd pose the question; what do all you other creative people out there do when you're trying to get those ideas flowing?
And, as an aside... Has anyone else ever been given really good - or really bad - advice on how they should work?

Man's Best Friend... So Why Don't We Treat Him That Way?

Dogs. Anyone who has or has ever had one knows how much joy they can bring to the life of a person or family. Large dogs or small dogs, clever dogs or dopey dogs, they all bring a smile to your face when you get home from school or work and find them wagging their tail as they wait for you.
But the sad truth is, not all dogs end up in a suitable home.
Just under two months ago, the young couple in the middle unit next door bought a puppy. For the first week or so, it howled and whined constantly, starting as early as 6am and going until as late as 11pm, or in some cases until after midnight. Being a dog owner myself, I know that puppies do cry for company a lot until they adapt to their new home, so I thought it would stop after a few weeks. But it didn't.
Upon further observation, I noticed that the new puppy owners were going out at 7am, and not getting home until after 10pm pretty much every day. And then yesterday, having been woken once again by the dog's whining, I went out to look at the dog (part of filing a noisy animal complaint with a council requires you to verify that you saw the dog as well as heard it barking) through a hole in the fence. Now, keeping in mind that their backyard is about the size of a toilet, I assumed that I would see a Jack Russell or terrier or something similar. But no. It was a labrador.
How can anyone possibly think that having any dog - let alone something that will grow as big as a labrador - in a yard that small is a good idea? Dogs are naturally energetic creatures. They need exercise and space to run around. Sticking them in a yard the size of a car boot borders on animal cruelty (a far more serious and separate issue, which I don't intend to explore in this post). Box them into a yard like that and you might as well be keeping it in a cage.
Secondly, even if it does have a big yard to run around in, dogs are pack animals. They need social contact with other creatures, and that means they need to be with their human family. Not only because they get lonely, but also because they need to be mentally as well as physically engaged, by playing games with them, petting them, taking them for walks and so on. If they don't have this, they get bored, and as a result they will howl/bark constantly, dig holes and destroy anything they can get their teeth on. And then, when the owner decides they're not so cute anymore, the dog is either abandoned or dumped at an animal shelter, simply because their owner didn't bother to do any research on owning an animal before buying one.
I'm not saying that an owner should spend every waking moment with their dog - that would be ridiculous and impossible. But leaving a dog alone for pretty much the whole day every day is unacceptable. It is not fair on either the dog or on the neighbours who have to put up with it.
I think that one of the main causes of dogs ending up with unsuitable owners (apart from the sheer stupidity of some people) is that it is so easy to buy a dog. You can go into a shopping centre or down the main street of your town, walk into a pet shop and go home with a new puppy, no questions asked. My question is: Why?
Before buying a puppy, a prospective owner should be able to prove that they are capable of caring for an animal. They should have their home and property checked to make sure it is big enough. They should have their lifestyle examined to make sure they will be home enough to properly exercise, groom and accompany their pet. It should be difficult to buy a dog. That way, the only people who ended up with one would be people who were willing and able to look after it for the rest of its life, not just until it stops being small and cute and cuddly.

Edit: Upon recently seeing the dog again more clearly, I realised it was actually a staffordshire bull terrier. Not as big as a labrador, but still too big to live comfortably in a yard that small.

Less is More... Expensive

Over the last few years, I've noticed that a lot of consumables, particularly food, are getting smaller, yet more expensive. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Take Cadbury chocolate, for example. We've all seen the blocks on our supermarket shelves, in enough flavours to keep you standing in the chocolate aisle for a good twenty minutes trying to decide which one to buy. There was a time when most (if not all) of these flavours came in 250 gram blocks, and you'd pay about $3.50 for one. Not anymore.
A year or so ago (not exactly sure when), Cadbury decided to give their blocks new packaging, including a cardboard box (instead of the previous paper wrapping). Lovely, everyone thought, who doesn't love new pretty packaging for their food? However, if you looked closely at the box, a horrifying discovery could be made; Cadbury had shaved the size of their blocks from anywhere between 30 and 60 grams. But they were still charging the same price, if not more (I've seen them for as much as $4.99 in some supermarkets).
How stupid do they think we are?
Moving on... canteens. I remember in the last few years of high school, the price of those Zooper Dooper icy poles skyrocketed from 20 cents to 60 cents. Now I get that we were all struggling to cope with the GST, canteens included, but come on. That doesn't warrant TRIPLING the price of an icy pole (yes, I know it's a cheap example, but it's just the principle of it). I thought that by the time I got to uni, prices would have settled, but no. Every year, they still manage to make things more expensive, but give you less of it (eg. Upping the price of a bucket of chips by 50 cents, but giving you a bucket two thirds the size of the old ones, and giving you 9 chicken chips for $2.50 instead of 8 for $1.60). We're STUDENTS. Don't they realise that we of all people CAN'T afford to be paying more and getting less? Surely there's some sort of regulating association responsible for preventing rip-offs like this? (clearly not. But there should be)
So, will there come a day when we're paying $20 for a single slice of bread? When we have to sell our house to be able to afford lunch from the school/uni/work canteen? Probably not. But it wouldn't surprise me.

Magic Mushrooms

Note: These mushrooms will not get you high if you eat them (and don't try to smoke them, you'll just mess yourself up). I take no responsibility for anyone's disappointment if they try and fail to use this recipe to create illicit narcotics.

Ingredients (to serve one person):
6-8 Small cup mushrooms
30-40 grams Cracked pepper cheese
1/6 Red capsicum (chopped into roughly 1cm long strips)
1 teaspoon Butter
Garlic paste

Preparation/Cooking Instructions:
1. Lay a sheet of aluminium foil on a baking tray and fold up the sides, forming a foil 'box'.
2. Pull the stalks out of the mushrooms, leaving the cup intact. Put the mushrooms hollow-side up on the baking tray and lay the mushroom stalks around them.
3. Slice off small wedges of cracked pepper cheese and stuff one into each of the mushrooms. Then take pieces of capsicum and poke two or three into the cheese in each mushroom. Any spare capsicum can be sprinkled over the mushroom stalks.
4. Take teaspoon of butter and mix with garlic paste (I used a ratio of about 2 parts butter, 1 part garlic paste, but you can use more or less, depending on how strong you want it). Microwave it for 30 seconds or so until melted, then drizzle it over the mushrooms and the stalks.
5. Preheat an oven to 180 degrees Celsius, and then bake the mushrooms for 15-18 minutes.
6.Serve on a small plate and eat immediately

Alternative extras:
-Fill the mushroom cups with spinach before stuffing them with cheese
-Sprinkle chopped chives or parsley over the mushrooms once they are cooked
-Use different varieties of cheese
-Add slivers of tomato
-Just for fun, stick one of those rainbow toothpick umbrellas in the middle of each mushroom before serving :D

Dark and Silent Waters: Battle Strategy *cue clanging swords*

In my last post, I said that I wanted to have a finished first draft of Dark and Silent Waters by the end of the year. In an effort to make myself achieve this, I decided to write up a 'plan' for the novella, including deadlines for when I want each section done by (which have been set around uni dates, so I can work on it during the holidays). I also decided I will do regular progress reports, so I can see how well I'm sticking to this plan. Hopefully having an attack strategy for the novella will bring me victory (MWAHAHA!). Even writing this now, I know I'll end up going all over the place, because I am rarely able to write in chronological order (eg. I've done the very beginning, the very end and the very middle, but nothing else haha), but at least I can pretend I'm being organised...

Deadline Plan
Outline - July 2
Prologue - January 31
Part 1 - July 18
Chapter 1 - July 10
Chapter 2 - July 14
Chapter 3 - July 18
Part 2 - November 20
Chapter 4 - September 29
Chapter 5 - October 3
Chapter 6 - November 20
Part 3 - December 20
Chapter 7 - November 30
Chapter 8 - December 10
Chapter 9 - December 20
Epilogue - December 31

Progress Report
Outline - 100% (needs rewrite)
Prologue - 100% (needs rewrite)
Part 1 - 30%
Chapter 1 - 90%
Chapter 2 - 0%
Chapter 3 - 0%
Part 2 - 20%
Chapter 4 - 0%
Chapter 5 - 0%
Chapter 6 - 60%
Part 3 - 0%
Chapter 7 - 0%
Chapter 8 - 0%
Chapter 9 - 0%
Epilogue - 90%

So now that I have issued the challenge to myself, thrown down the gauntlets if you will, let's see if I can reign supreme over my novella...

The Yoyo Writer

I've spent most of today working on one of my fictional works. And when I say 'working', what I actually mean is 'staring blankly at the screen waiting for inspiration to strike'. So I thought I might as well do a blog post on writing (it is, after all, one of the main reasons I created the blog in the first place).
To begin with, I would like to point out that I will not post exerpts from my novels in this blog. Well, I MAY occasionally post a single line or sentence (if I feel like showing it off, or if I feel that it needs critiquing), but you won't be seeing any full chapters. While I would like to share more of my work publicly, this runs the risk of impacting any future copyright assertions I may have if/when I get something published. Generally, the only people who see my work in progress are family and friends (particularly those I went to TAFE and did the Writing and Editing Diploma with. As an aside, I'd like to thank anyone who has workshopped/will workshop my writing :D).
Those of you who know me are aware that I have several vague, unfinished story ideas bouncing around in my head, many of which will probably never see the light of day. However, there are two projects that I am deeply engaged with, and I tend to bounce back and forth between them like a yoyo. The first is Exile, an epic/dark fantasy trilogy I began in early 2005 and the second is Dark and Silent Waters, a dark fantasy tale that started early this year as a short story idea, and then exploded into a novella.
For almost three years while in the Writing and Editing course at TAFE, I had been plodding away with Exile, throwing together a very vague outline of the trilogy as a whole and writing the first seven chapters of the first novel. But I never felt like I was making a lot of progress with it, perhaps because the sheer scope of the project was so massive I just couldn't visualise it ever being completed. In a way, it was starting to depress me. So when the idea for Dark and Silent Waters came along (inspired by a song I found while randomly browsing music on YouTube), I seized the distraction from Exile with both hands. More than that, I beat it half to death with a stick and shoved it into a cage so it couldn't get away. And then I sat on the cage.
Though I've only worked on Dark and Silent Waters for a few months, I already feel that I've made more progress with it than I ever made with Exile. Not only have I written the prologue and the epilogue (I find it difficult to write in chronological order, I have to write scenes as they appear in my mind) and chapter 1, I have also managed to write a complete outline, from beginning to end, of the whole story. This, combined with the fact that it is a smaller project than Exile, makes it seem more achievable. I'm hoping that once I finish this novella, I will have the confidence and experience necessary to bounce back to Exile once more, and take on the trilogy in a way that will do it more justice. Ideally, I would like to have a completed first draft of Dark and Silent Waters by the end of this year (though whether I can actually pull it off remains to be seen).

Yes, I Now Have a Blog! (woot?)

Though, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to put in it. As a writer and illustrator, I will mainly use it to showcase samples of my works under construction and completed pieces (at least until I get my proper portfolio up and running), as well as updates on the progress of whatever I'm working on at the moment. (and I'd be lying if I said I will never use it to procrastinate from working on said creative works :D)
However, I will also post other random things, such as reviews (on books, music, movies and anything else I feel the need to write about), amusing anecdotes or general observations/questions about life. I don't know how often I'll post - between uni, work and pursuing my creative endeavours, spare time is a luxury I don't often get. All I know is that I look forward to finishing off my IT/Multimedia course so I can spend time on things I want to do/get paid to do as opposed to things I have to do :)
For now, you can view some of my illustrations here:
http://s829.photobucket.com/albums/zz220/RebeccaJFleming/Artwork/
or follow me on Twitter here:
http://twitter.com/DemonicDragon